Do Away With Homosexuality In Ghana -Speaker

The Speaker of Parliament, Prof Mike Oquaye, has outlined parliament’s commitment toward strengthening the laws abhorring homosexuality in the country.

This comes on the heels of concerns by a section of the populace who feel the existing laws are not biting enough.

According to Professor Oquaye, who condemned the practice, no such law will ever be passed under his watch, shutting down any hopes of the several pro-gay groups that the country will decriminalise the act.

The Speaker made this known when a delegation from the Royal House Chapel led by its founder and general overseer Apostle General Sam Korankye Ankrah paid a courtesy call on him in Accra.

“You’ll find that even priests are approving of homosexuality and having a man and a man marry and a woman and a woman marry.

These are manifest abominations. I trust that with your kind of insistence, parliament of Ghana, which also reacts sometimes to the society which we live in, will find its way clear to strengthen the laws on homosexuality as they exist because as for this, may God forbid that it becomes a Ghanaian culture,” he stated.

“ don’t want to see a situation where two people come to marry and one family sits here, another sits there and when they say where is the bride a man comes with a moustache and the groom too comes with a beard. You ask yourself, ‘what kind of lust is this?’

But you are the conscience of society and you can help people avoid this before it becomes like fashion because it is very easy for it to become fashionable.”

“I do not see how we can, either through policy or legislation, regulate religious activities. If I had my way, I will make a strong recommendation to the president, Nana Akufo-Addo, to rechristen that ministry, that is Ministry for Chieftaincy and some other affairs, but not religious affairs because it remains an emotive, sensitive issue and people can be misconstrued. Are we going to regulate religion? How?

And, therefore, it’s better to even do it in the quiet than to have a manifestation where there is a Minister for Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs because we all know the sensitivities that are associated with it,” he noted.

Mr Iddrisu advised church leaders to lead exemplary lives worthy of emulation. “So, the church, Mr Speaker, I expect remains very vocal. Things that the politicians and other people will be quiet about, we expect to hear your voice on those issues, but when you also reduce yourself to conducts and behaviours that are abominable, then when you preach on those decencies and issues of God, we are likely to justify our misbehaviour that: ‘Even the men of God, that is how they do it.’”

Founder and General Overseer of the Royal House Chapel, Apostle General Rev. Sam Korankye Ankrah, on his part, called on parliament to help streamline and regulate the activities of some pastors in the country.

“In these days church people who don’t read Bibles but rather want to follow names and personalities…in some instances they call their leaders even Angels. The result is the spiritual chaos where, if care is not taken, it will be very easy for any religious leader to so coerce his people and to give them poison in the name of communion and people will take it, drink it and die as we can recall as history teaches us in other places,” the clergyman stated.

“Apart from this I do not know what this parliament can also do to help and sanitise the situation and bring some amount of order. We have seen in this country where religious leaders err by the law and when police invite them to answer certain questions you see members flooding the police station, threatening to die or kill themselves if the leader was not released. These are some of the problems that we have.”